Tag Archives: dailiness

Yesterday a friend emerged from surgery; another one is going in tomorrow.

One friends left for her summer location; another left on an extended trip to see loved ones.

I drive south to reconnect with a long time friend. I drive east to share breakfast with my daughter. I go north to attend a meeting.

I have a conference call on tap for the morning. I need to make some appointments with doctors. I have to have a prescription refilled. I need to take a rain check.

But where am I–my heart, my mind, my soul?

I remember Carmen Bernos de Gasztolde’s “The Prayer of the Butterfly”from her Prayers from the Ark:

Lord!/ Where was I?/ Oh yes! This flower, this sun, /thank you! Your world is beautiful!/This scent of roses…/where was I?/ A drop of dew/ rolls to sparkle in a lily’s heart./ I have to go…/ Where? I do not know!/ The wind has painted fancies/ on my wings./Fancies…/ Where was I?/ Oh yes! Lord,/ I had something to tell you.

When my worlds are so much with me, I have a hard time keeping track of myself! Every world is interesting–fascinating or compelling or demanding, yet if I can’t locate my own center of being, I don’t have much to bring to the worlds I navigate.

In this Eastertide I am needing to practice once again paying attention first thing in the morning and last thing at night to where I am. I begin with my body–what space do I occupy? how does it feel? where are the comfortable or sore places that inform me of my state of being? I then attend to my heart–what feelings am I aware of? if I stay longer, what else is there? Then I move to my wider location: what is happening or has happened today? what will I or did I do? what crossed my mind? captured my attention? keeps pulling on my focus? I almost always need to do this in silence, alone–often with my candle lit, reminding me that the Light of the Holy never goes out. I also need to take time, enough time to let the mud settle, to let unattended hope and fears surface, to develop a sense of proportion and place.

It is a continuing amazement and distress to me that I have to practice this over and over, I am always a beginner. My Butterfly Mind has such strong wings, and rides so hard on the updrafts! So I need to come back to what I know for sure: The Holy One knows not only who I am, but where I am. In Psalm 139, the poet declares:

If I want to know where I am, I need every day to begin with the One who knows. And the Spirit is willing to lead me into knowing, even after sleeping. When I awake, I am still with you. (KJV, Psalm 139: 18, b).

Yesterday the Gratefulness.org website posted this thought of the day:

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. ~ THOMAS MERTON

It is in the time of silence of beginning and closing the day where the recognition of that which Merton calls for begins to speak, and it is there where the Spirit who knows me inside and out can guide my awareness, can replenish me for this present moment, and empower me with courage, faith and hope once again.

In Lent this year, I am practicing some themes from Celtic spirituality, suggested by Joyce Rupp, one per week. Her first theme is to notice and celebrate the Presence of the Holy in the ordinary–the small details of our lives–our routines, our surroundings and the people who are front and center. She makes the suggestion that every morning and evening we bless our children.

I have prayed for each of my children and grandchildren since before they were born. But in picking up this Lenten practice which is more regular and more intense, I notice first that my prayers for them now are often either “defensive,” asking for protection or correction, or are just generic, “bless the beasts and the children” kinds of prayers. To bless them in a focused way twice a day is calling me to focus on each of them in his or her particularity, and to see them more deeply and lovingly.

John O’Donahue in his book, To Bless the Space between Us, describes blessing this way:

A blessing is not a sentiment or a question; it is a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart.

So I embark this practice with an open heart. What do I already know about each of them, two of them since their conception? What do I still need to observe and to learn? In what can I take delight and rejoice? What concerns can I lift to the Holy One for healing, for satisfying, for directing, for deepening? And how can I be a blessing to each of them, without hovering, prying, judging or interfering?

It was a joy-filled exercise to inscribe in my journal the name of each one, and to limn out the qualities and aspects of that personality, as I pray for blessing for her or for him for that morning and evening. In the collection of the eight of them (in-laws included!), there is such diversity in temperament, style and affections: introverts and extroverts, actors and contemplatives, students and athletes, cheerleaders and followers. In addition, they all keep growing up, changing, even the adults among them, so that my list keeps inviting additions and subtractions day by day. I bless school assignments, sports events, play dates, rehearsals, and after-school lessons. I bless marriages, job searches, office politics, bank accounts. And I bless the working and loving, the hopes and the dreams, as well as bumps in the road that seem to block those dreams. And I pray for each unique spirit of that growing one, made in the image of the Holy, that it be preserved and nourished, and, yes, protected, as it follows the path of the Spirit that is meant for it.

Joyce Rupp suggests this prayer of blessing:

May God and the angels guide, guard, and protect you this night.

And so I go to sleep praying this blessing for each one by name…Sean, Erica Lee, Dalton, Malakai, Erica Brooke, Ezra, Theo, Sadie. I am filled with hope as I bless each one, even as I enter into the arms of the angels who watch and bless me as I sleep, believing that the One who is blessing me will also bless them. A loving way to begin Lent!

Some periods of my living seem quite straightforward and almost orderly, one thing after another in sequence. Then there are the other times in which I am listening to a myriad of melodies, never quiet sure where the downbeat and back beat should be. I begin a day quite sure that I know what its schedules is, and then in an instant, the phone rings or the doorbell chimes or a text message appears, and everything is suddenly rearranged. There also is the matter of density–some periods are blissfully leisurely, some others packed to rafters with deadlines piled atop one another, everything due within the same week. How did that happen? And how does the Holy One appear to me in such changing tempos?

Something in this picture I took of the concert arena at Disney Hall, awaiting the performance of Tan Dunn’s “Water Passion,” gives me some clues. All the necessary elements are ready: instruments, chairs, lights and what appears to be the infrastructure for the performance. They are diverse. Some do not seem to fit the usual categories of musical offerings. Some are part of the visual architecture of the hall itself. But at the right time the music begins at the direction of the conductor. The musicians–singers, players, and movers–all follow the lead of the one who is interpreting the work of the composer, in his rhythm, at his speed, on his cue. Measure after measure unfolds, and it becomes the musical offering it was meant to be.

I do not believe in a puppeteer God, who is managing the strings of my life from far above in the sky. I do believe in a Holy One who knows the set-up of my life–body, psyche, intentions, resources and limitations, the things that I keep in place continually through spiritual practice alone and with the community. I also believe that as Jeremiah the prophet says the plans that the Holy One has are for good–mine and the world around me. So my question must turn from “how did this happen?” to “how is God here?” and “what is the invitation to me when my careful Plan A unravels into Plans B, C and D?” How do I hear the downbeat for the beginning of this magnum opus of a moment?

In the days I have been musing on this, I come back again and again to the way I start each day, or phase, or month, or year, or decade, when I pause to look at what is before me–the instruments, the risers, the percussion instruments, the water, the lights– to see if I have supplied them, made them ready. Then it is time to listen; I offer the prayer, “Loving God, here I am.” And I wait. Until I sense that the Conductor is starting the downbeat. Now it is time for moving in these 10 minutes, in this hour, in this day, in this time of my life. Each day has its own rhythm, and each day has its own interruptions. I am comforted by Rumi who enjoins me to welcome the uninvited visitor, even if my “plans” are thrown off.

And what about those spaces where there is suddenly nothing scheduled? nothing happening? I have found that these are gifts as well–they are spaces for noticing what is around me–what is blooming, what is growing, what is shining, what is singing. They are opportunities for imagining and dreaming of what might be and where my heart longs to soar. They are fallow times when I take in the beauty, the goodness, the richness of the Word–written or sketched or embodied–all nourishing the resources of my body and soul in preparation for the next downbeat of the Conductor.

This week we enter into Lent, and I will be attending to an external prompt for the rhythm of my life. Yet within each day and its infinite variety, I will still be listening each morning for today’s downbeat and tempo, trying to be a faithful dancer on the journey of following the Holy.

When I get stuck in amber, cannot seem to move ahead or back (often in the summer heat), I revert to well-tried practices of Spirit that have energized me in the past. So this summer I have reclaimed the Ignatian practice of the daily examen. I first learned this practice in a winsome and accessible book by the Linns called Sleeping with Bread. They describe simply the daily practice of reviewing one’s day with a set of questions: “Where did I experience Grace today?” and “where did I feel farthest from Grace today?” Alternately, one could ask :where did I feel the most freedom?” and “where did I feel most restricted?” The answers to these prayerful questions then may lead to prayer, first those of gratitude, and then to prayers for forgiveness, for wisdom, for healing. I love this concrete, do-able exercise, for it helps me pay attention to my life in God, and helps direct my prayer to specific area of longing and need.

During these months I discovered…or was led to…a new book called Reimagining the Ignatian Examen by Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ, (Loyola Press, 2015) in which he deepens the basic premises of the examen, then focus them in thirty-four specific area of questioning designed to take one into the heart of each question. In using the book, I was instructed to begin in gratitude for particular gifts of the previous day. (I need to use this prayer in the morning; i am too sleepy at night!). Then, I was directed to review my day in light of the day’s focus, such as habits or thoughts, words, deeds, or discernment. Taking not more than 15 minutes, likening my responses to “tweet-size journaling,” I was able to recall, savor and then to examine in a more precise way i which I had encountered the Holy One and where I needed to ask for something–forgiveness, assurance, wisdom, all with a more pointed direction.

I became aware that all too often my prayer has been generic…”God, bless us all” kinds of prayers, but that I longed to be more concrete, more specific in my relationship with Christ and more conscious of that holy encounter when I was aware of the Presence, the Breath, the Fire, the Grace. So I was delighted to be prodded to something more. Over the course of the summer days, especially the dog-days in which we are now living, the keenness of each day’s particular questions often became a sign post pointing me in the direction of other connected, synergistic signs by which I could notice God’s presence, and hear God’s word. On a day when the examen directed me to think about the question, “what do you seek?”, I was then asked to preach on a text from Mark’s gospel in which the question was, “what do you want me to do for you?” In response in my own musings and in preparation for bringing the Word, I needed to dig in my soul for answers to those connected questions. After a day of asking the question, “Who wore God’s face today?,” I saw at an exhibit of the art of Corita Kent an early painting of hers, in which a woman is holding up both hands in prayer, as if she is offering up both her gloriousness as a creature of God and her frailty as a human being. A powerful selection on Choosing Life led me into walking through many days mindful of whether this action in which I was engaged was one in which I was choosing life or choosing death by not inhabiting my life.

And so energy has begun to flow, attention is being paid, love is blooming. The amber is set aside for the another time, and the the “sacrament of the present moment” is being honored. Ahead of me lies a connection with a friend, a performance of a young person, a reading with my beloved, a larky trip with children and grandchildren–all moments full of movement, possibility, hope and prayer. The examen-ed life is well worth living!

Personal photo of painting by Corita Kent at Pasadena Museum of California Art.

All of my life of the Spirit takes place in my body planted in the physical world where I am rooted. As much as I would love to waft far and away above earth’s lamentations, I find myself often, much like Winnie-the-Pooh floating with his balloon, being thumped along the cold and bumpy ground, because I am a human being in a created body that is made of dust, and to dust I will return.

My intention to be peace is interrupted by an urgent phone call from a neighbor needing assistance. My vision of resting in the Spirit gets cluttered with the trash that the dog has strewn all over the back yard. My song of praise is cut short by the sounds of sandblasting next door. My prayers intended to be incense rising are more often overridden by the stench of garbage spilled on the sidewalk. My words that I crafted to be like apples of gold is a setting of silver are drowned out by the yammering rhetoric of both public and private pundits of politics. How do I keep my attention on the Holy when there is so much that might distract and divert it?

My new drought-resistant garden has been a teacher to me about my earthliness this season. Its variety and its beauty are continual surprises each morning, but not all the surprises are welcome ones. Suddenly one morning, a year after the lawn has been taken out, all the earth in the front yard has been replaced, completely new plantings have taken root, I find a wild invasive mushroom blooming. It is not edible, nor is it useful; it was not what I wanted, but there it is. It needs to be removed. Attention must be paid! The garden is not Eden, it is made from dust, as I am, and not everything that grows there is beautiful or necessary. I turn aside to take care of it before I continue to glory in the beauty of the irises that proliferate.

Maybe this is the next teaching: the same earth that spawned the mushroom also provided the nourishment for the fabulous flowers! The spiritual lesson is to be awake, attentive, and discerning. What is mine to notice? what is mine to act on? what is mine to savor and thank God for? what is mine to prune, to tend and to water? I find I need to be more mindful; I cannot just send up a prayer and hope it all turns out right. My spirit need to act in concert with my hopes and dreams.

In these freshly troubled days of reflection after the murders at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, SC, I am asking myself what and how do I need to act in order to contribute to a cessation of violence and hatred in this country. Every sound bite I hear, every op-ed piece I read, every pastoral letter I receive offers a different piece of advice. The fabric of this world, this nation, our people is so tattered and torn. I am brokenhearted and baffled. So I am back to the discerning prayer until Wisdom comes.

I also am reminded too that I am earthen–we have this treasure in clay jars (2 Cor.4:7)–and I am limited, fragile and imperfect. So The Solution to the Evils in the World does not rest on me alone. The discerned actions that I will be led to take will be ones that participate in the clarification that it is God who is able to do more than I can believe or imagine to redeem this crisis, both the immediate one in South Carolina and the deeper, more tragic sin and brokenness that springs out of this evil in the world. So we do not lose heart.

As I wend my way though the dusty paths I am called to wander today, I pray for compassion, for wisdom, for courage, trusting the Word of the Holy, that what is required is that I be faithful to the call of Christ to be just and to be merciful, and to be creative, discerning and energetic in living out my earthbound journey of Spirit.